Attack table
Theory In June of 2005, a Blizzard representative made the following statement: :"The way WoW calculates crit rate is over ALL attacks. Crit rate is not based on hits only. In other words, if you have a 5% crit rate, that 5% chance includes misses." Based on the implications of this statement, coupled with extensive testing by dilligent players, it has become clear that the result of every melee or ranged attack is decided based on a single server-generated random number (a single "die roll" made internally on the server), checked against a server-side internal table for the attack. From a computational perspective, this makes sense. Generating a random number requires several complex calculations that consume a lot of CPU time, relative to the time it takes to simply look up the chances for each different attack result. On a server with thousands of players fighting thousands of mobs, the result of each attack must be determined as quickly as possible. Generating one random number and comparing it against a table is a lot faster than generating a random number to see if an attack misses, then generating another random number to see if the attack is dodged, etc.. The Table for Melee Attacks The following tables are laid out in descending order of the precedence of one attack result over another. That is to say, the entries at the top of the table take precedence over the entries below them. Miss Dodge Parry Block Glancing Blow (players only) Critical Crushing Blow (mobs only) ordinary hit What this table means is this: * Every melee attack has a chance to miss, to be dodged, to be parried, to be blocked, to be a glancing blow, to be a critical, and to be a crushing blow. Anything left over is an ordinary hit. * The chances listed in your general spellbook tab (for you to Dodge, Parry, or Block) are absolute percentages. If you have a listed dodge chance of 4.5%, then on average 4.5% of all melee attacks made against you by a mob of equal level will be dodged, not merely 4.5% of those melee attacks that didn't miss you. * Some melee attacks have a 0% chance for some of these attack results; e.g., an attack made by a player has a 0% chance of being a crushing blow, an attack made against a player without a shield has a 0% chance of being blocked, the warrior's Overpower attack has a 0% chance to be a block dodge or parry, etc.. * There is no such thing as a blocked crushing blow, a parried crit, a missed glancing blow, etc.. All of these possible attack results are mutually exclusive. * If the total chances of all the entries above the bottom of the table reach or exceed 100%, the attack cannot be an ordinary hit. * If the total combined chance of a miss, dodge, parry, or block is 100% or higher (as in the case of a well-geared warrior using Shield Block), not only can the attack not be an ordinary hit, the attack also cannot be a crit or a crushing blow. Note that the data determining whether dodge has precedence over parry, or vice-versa, are somewhat lacking, due to the high precedence of both of these attack results over all the others. Theoretically, a level 60 rogue with a lot of +dodge and +parry gear with the Deflection talent and a judicious use of Evasion should be able to test this against a level 1 attacker, but such a test would take a long time to perform. Example 1 Suppose a mob of equal level is attacking your warrior character in melee. Your Defense skill is maxed out for your level, but has no other bonuses. In the general tab of your spell book, you see that your listed Dodge chance is 4.5%, your listed Parry chance is 6.2%, and your listed Block chance (you have your shield equipped) is 5.1%. For the mob attacking you, its attack table will look like this: Result Chance "Die Roll" Miss 5.00% 0.01 - 5.00 Dodge 4.50% 5.01 - 9.50 Parry 6.20% 9.51 - 15.70 Block 5.10% 15.71 - 20.80 Glancing Blow 0% — Critical 5.00% 20.81 - 25.80 Crushing Blow 0% — ordinary hit 74.20% 25.81 - 100.00 Now say that you elect to activate this warrior's Shield Block skill. Shield Block increases the warrior's Block chance by an additional 75%. For the next attack against your warrior, the mob's attack table now looks like this: Result Chance "Die Roll" Miss 5.00% 0.01 - 5.00 Dodge 4.50% 5.01 - 9.50 Parry 6.20% 9.51 - 15.70 Block 80.10% 15.71 - 95.80 Glancing Blow 0% — Critical 4.20% 95.81 - 100.00 Crushing Blow 0% — ordinary hit 0% — Note that the chance of an ordinary hit has been removed from the possible attack results entirely, and the chance of a Critical hit has been reduced somewhat. Example 2 Roguey the Rogue is level 60, and is attacking a boss mob along with the rest of his raid group. He has stocked up on all sorts of +crit gear, so his crit chance against the boss mob is a whopping 30%. Since he is dual-wielding, he incurs an additional +19% miss chance on every autoattack swing; and although his +weapon skill gear does counter a little bit of this, he did not bring any +hit gear with him, so his miss chance against a boss mob is 24.3%. When he attacks the boss mob from the front, Roguey's attack table looks like this: Result Chance "Die Roll" Miss 24.30% 0.01 - 24.30 Dodge 5.60% 24.31 - 29.90 Parry 5.60% 29.91 - 35.50 Block 5.60% 35.51 - 41.10 Glancing Blow 40.00% 41.11 - 81.10 Critical 18.90% 81.11 - 100.00 Crushing Blow 0% — ordinary hit 0% — Note that despite his nominal "crit chance" of 30%, his miss chance from dual-wielding and his glancing blow chance due to the boss's high level mean that only 18.9% of his attacks are going to be critical hits. This conundrum is sometimes referred to as the Crit Cap -- his chance to crit is capped at 18.9%, so 11.1% of his +crit bonus is wasted. Realizing his stupidity, Roguey maneuvers around behind the boss mob to continue his attacks. From behind, a mob cannot parry or block, so Roguey's attack table now looks like this: Result Chance "Die Roll" Miss 24.30% 0.01 - 24.30 Dodge 5.60% 24.31 - 29.90 Parry 0% — Block 0% — Glancing Blow 40.00% 29.91 - 69.90 Critical 30.00% 69.91 - 99.90 Crushing Blow 0% — ordinary hit 0.10% 99.91 - 100.00 The Table for Ranged Attacks A ranged attack cannot result in a dodge, parry, block, or glancing blow. (On their test realms at one point, Blizzard experimented with allowing a small dodge chance against ranged attacks, but this was considered too harmful to Hunters and the experiment was abandoned.) Thus, the attack result table for ranged attacks reduces to the following: Miss Critical Crushing Blow (mobs only) ordinary hit Attack spells Spells do not use the above tables. The result of casting a spell against a target are determined in an entirely different manner. See Formulas:Spell hit chance. External links * http://evilempireguild.org/guides/attacks.php Category:Formulas and Game Mechanics